Transcript of a YouTube interview featuring Sabri Suby describing how he founded the digital agency King Kong in 2014 from a rented bedroom with about $50 and an old computer. He recounts intensive early hustle (≈150 cold calls/day, ~16-hour workdays), hiring contractors and his wife, deciding to scale beyond a solo cash-flow business, and strategies for managing chaos by delegating and making himself redundant in operational roles. The clip ends with a YouTube call-to-action.
Questions this video answers
2014
About $50
A rented bedroom
Approximately 150 cold calls per day
About 16 hours a day
Chapters
Amanda Sabri Subhi joins me now in the studio. I really look at business as an incredible vehicle to really make good and make change in the world.
Did you start this at home in a bedroom? Is that what I remember reading in the book?
Yes. So I started King Kong in 2014 from a rented bedroom with no more than $50 and an old computer that my girlfriend had bought me, who is now my wife.
And.
And, you know, no bawling buddies or rich uncles or people just handing me money. Like, I rolled up my sleeves 150 cold calls a day and desperately just called strangers to get them as clients.
Wow. And then so when you started getting clients and all of a sudden you got overwhelmed with work. And for the people out there who feel the same way, what were the first steps that you took to get back control over the chaos?
That's a great question. For me, it was very chaotic because I was doing the selling by day and then I was doing the client fulfillment work by night. So, like, I was working 16 hours a day in the beginning, and it was just hectic. Like, I would wake up, bring on the clients, then do the work. Then I started to, you know, get contractors, brought my wife to come and help me out in the business. Then, you know, got it to a point where I was like, hey, like, what am I doing here? Is this a cash flow business? Like, is that what you're doing? Is this a lifestyle, just provide a good lifestyle, or do you want to build something bigger? And when I decided no, like, I want to build something that's a lot bigger than me. I don't want it to be the Sabri Show. That was when I ponied up, got an office, and started to build a team, right? And there is always chaos. Like, it's. This is the part of, like, the game, right? There's this like, you know, you. You bring people in and try and make yourself redundant at every step of the way. So that's kind of like the way that I have always looked at growing my business is like, where is it my time is going, right? And who can I get? Who can I delegate this to automate this or just remove it completely to make myself redundant in that role? And then you slowly start to ascend up. And for me, first it was like, well, I'm spending eight hours a day on the telephone. Let me go and hire somebody to basically do a lot of the selling with me, and then let me get an account manager and let me do this and let me do that. So you always are looking to kind of make yourself redundant throughout that process. But, you know, there is always going to be chaos. There is always going to be problems in scaling a business. You know, I often look liken scaling a business to like, you know, eating a mouthful of fire ants while riding a motorbike blindfolded through the snow at 100 miles an hour naked. Right. There's a lot of uncertainty in doing these things, but it doesn't get easier. You just have to get better. And you have to get better in building moats around yourself. So there's not the same amount of static and white noise. Right. And. But there will always still be some level of chaos, but you just don't want it to get so big that you're not able to work on the important things. If you enjoyed this video, please like and subscribe. We're dropping a video like this almost every single day on YouTube and if you've got any questions, leave them in the comments box below with heysubri and I'll do my best to get in there and get that answered.
